


It Ain't Easy

by reinkist



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bisexual Lance (Voltron), First Time, Friendship, Gay Keith (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, M/M, Masturbation, Mind Meld, Minor Injuries, No Pronouns for Pidge, Sexuality Crisis, Slow Burn, Team Bonding, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Written before Season 2, also this is very poorly factchecked so sorry about that, conversations with lions, i guess you could say, in character swearing, just let shiro rest, ramifications of sharing thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:45:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8087809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reinkist/pseuds/reinkist
Summary: Sometimes, paradoxically, spending a lot of time inside someone else's head makes it even harder to understand them.Six months after the collapse of the wormhole, Lance and Keith have some differences to work out.





	1. Chapter 1

Lance never thought it was a good idea to think things over too much. You just end up bogged down in too many details and you never really know anything until you try, anyway, so what's the point? You have to trust your gut about shit, and if your gut decides unanimously that it wants to do something there's not much point in trying to figure out _why_ you want to do it. All that matters is that you _do_.

So has been Lance's general policy on life, and it never really steers him too far off course. He's always known he was destined to be a pilot, and look where he was. There was that summer at home when he'd asked out nigh-unattainable Abby Torres and they'd ended up hot and heavy in the back of his brother's car on multiple, multiple occasions. He knew he was going to have a great time if he and Hunk snuck out of the dormitories the night Shiro crashed back down to Earth. He knew it was going to be awesome to climb inside Blue when they found her and, why not, hop in the pilot's seat. So when Keith's buttons just continued to be so easy to push there was never any question of Lance milking that fact for all it was worth.

If Lance were to be completely honest people didn't usually react much to his teasing. Somehow Keith had missed the memo that everyone seemed to have gotten around the onset of puberty that said, just ignore Lance. He's just being stupid, he's just trying to get attention. Just ignore him, and he'll stop. But Keith had always been such an easy mark, and he was even easier of one now that Lance was actually starting to get to _know_ him.

He was starting to get a glimpse at the bigger picture. How Keith could never turn down a challenge, especially if it was a dangerous one. The more dangerous the better, really. How he could meet Keith's anger with the wet slap of straight up flippancy and how it would make Keith retreat back upon himself, simmering in fury for ages afterwards. How Keith legitimately couldn't tell when Lance was fucking with him, to a degree that actually managed to make a tiny sliver of doubt or maybe guilt worm its way into the back of Lance's mind.

He managed to ignore it because it felt so good, though.

Teasing Keith.

"What are you gonna do tonight?" Hunk asks, poking his spoon listlessly around his dish. It had been at least a month since they'd been to any planets that had food any of them could eat and they'd finally run out of everything that wasn't Altean. Lance had been picking at his own goo, too, trying to motivate himself to finish it.

"Do you think there's some level of hunger you can get to that would make this actually taste delicious?"

"I dunno." Hunk says, morose, dropping his chin into one hand. "I...don't really wanna think about that?"

"Fair."

"So, _anyway_ , what are you going to do tonight?"

Lance sighs loudly and lolls his head. "Die. Die of boredom."

"I'm starting to think that's how I'm going to go, man. I'm not joking."

Footsteps echo down the corridor behind him towards the mess hall and Lance takes a gamble. "Well, whatever I do, I hope it's not with _Keith_ , I totally hate that guy."

Hunk gives him a weird look for a beat, then his eyes widen. "Lance. Shut up."

"I mean, Keith! What's up with that guy, anyway?" A grin spreads over Lance's face. He bites down on his lower lip.

"Lance!" Hunk is stage whispering at him. "Shut! Up!"

"What."

A jolt shoots through Lance's middle. Keith sounds pissed. He'd ended that word with such a sulky, overemphasized T. "Oh, nothing!" Lance manages to get his grin under control and looks over his shoulder at Keith, who has his arms crossed and his eyebrows drawn. His mouth is twisted in confusion. Lance can see all the way up the narrow lines of his hips to his waist under the hem of that dumb cropped jacket. "I was just wondering how that belt even stays up when you seriously have like. No hips." He drops both hands through the air in perfect parallel lines. "Absolutely none."

"We were _not_ talking about that." Hunk's eyes are still round as saucers. "Lance, what the hell."

"I wasn't hungry anyway," Keith says and turns back toward the door. His shoulders hunch as he goes, and Lance's eyes wander from the flip of hair at the back of his neck to his back pockets, which he absently watches until Keith disappears down the hallway.

"OK, Lance, what, the _heck_ is going on with you and Keith?"

Lance drags his gaze back over to the table, and to Hunk. "What are you talking about?"

"I mean, it's kind of none of my business? Except that it is my business, because we all have to like, you know, because, Voltron..."

"Seriously. Hunk. What are you talking about?"

"Oh my god. Don't act like you don't know."

Lance huffs. "Except I _don't_ know!"

"Did something like, _happen_ between you two?" Hunk gestures from Lance to the general direction Keith disappeared to. Fuck. He actually looks mad. "Why are you being so mean to him again?"

Lance scrunches up his face. "I'm not being mean to him."

Hunk groans and smacks a hand over his eyes. "Oh, my god, yes you are."

Lance shrugs and pokes at his goo.

"I thought you two were, you know. Getting along. Pretty well. Actually."

"We are!" Lance shrugs, giving off so much of an air of So Completely Unconcerned that Hunk gives up.

"Oh my god, never mind. I'm just gonna hang out with Pidge. You..." He trails off, then slices his hand in a decisive line as he slides off the edge of the bench and stands. "Never mind."

Lance finishes his goo in silence, then goes off to find Keith.

He finds Keith on the training deck. It's where he always goes, when he's not off communing with Red for hours at a time, or whatever it is that he does down in his hangar.

"Hey," Lance says, raising a hand in greeting. Keith glares at him for a split second before he has to turn his attention back to the sword of the combatant robot that's slicing down towards his head. He brings his bayard up to block it, then jumps back out of its reach.

"What do you want," Keith calls, voice gruff, adjusting his grip on his sword as the robot begins to circle.

"Maybe I just came here to train."

"Yeah right." There's a low edge to his voice that makes something twist in Lance's middle. Keith's always talking way at the bottom of his register, like his voice is actually all low or something, even though it's not. The robot lunges, and Keith parries, stumbling back a little at the force of the strike.

"I train plenty! Just, you know. Not in here."

"Sure you do." Keith lunges at the robot, and they clang swords, back and forth, back and forth, until the robot's head explodes in a flash of blue.

Lance lowers his rifle, grinning ear to ear. "Toldya."

Keith watches the robot fall, then snaps his gaze to Lance's. "I was in the middle of a program."

"Screw that! Go one on one with me." Lance crooks a thumb back at himself. "Human brain, way better than AI."

"You hardly ever even beat _this_ AI!" Keith says with an incredulous gesture towards the downed robot. A laser blast hits the ground an inch away from his foot. He jumps.

Lance prances away and out of the reach of Keith's sword, laughing, and the instant Keith regains his balance he's chasing after him. Lance doesn't let him get close, making him dodge blast after blast, slowing him down, staying just out of range.

"I thought, agh!" Keith jumps out of the way of a laser blast aimed at his feet. "I thought you didn't want to hang out with me." That last part is _angry_. A little chill goes up Lance's spine.

"Dude, it was a joke. Obviously!" Lance laughs and fires twice. Keith feints to the left but comes in right, sword swinging down towards Lance's chest. Lance blocks with his gun, laughing, breathless, as Keith bears down with his sword.

"Well I don't get it," Keith snaps, eyes furious, pressing down until Lance's legs give out and he sprawls backwards onto the floor. His arms hit the floor above his head from the force of it, his rifle clattering away from him, across the cold tile.

Lance lies there for a long moment, chest heaving, the flat of Keith's sword against his the side of his neck. "Maybe I just like pissing you off," Lance says, grinning, eyes hooded. "So what."

Keith straightens, eyebrows furrowing in confusion, and the sword drops away from Lance's throat. They stare at each other for far too long, Lance still sprawled out on the floor, still grinning, Keith frozen, his sword hanging in the air. "I don't get you," Keith says, finally, in that tone of his that's probably meant to be tough or something but Lance always thinks sounds just north of bratty.

Lance moves to get up but Keith lunges forward again, the blunt tip of his sword digging into Lance's collarbone. "Ow! Hey. Come on..."

"If you have a problem with me, just fucking say it," Keith grinds out. "I'm sick of this."

Lance gulps as Keith's sword traces the contour of his throat to press in under his jaw. His elbows are starting to complain against the hard metal of the floor. His fingers twitch. Blood rushes in his ears.

Keith is so...

He's so awkward and stilted most of the time, his voice, his body language. He annunciates sentences like he's rehearsed them multiple times in his head before committing them to speech. He never looks like he knows what to do with his arms, so they stay crossed over his chest pretty much ninety percent of the time. But under all that there's a simmering ocean of frustration and rage and desperation for that next rush of adrenaline, wherever, whenever, it might come, and _that_...

"Lance," Keith says, and his voice is choked with suppressed rage. It's a warning, and Lance doesn't intend to heed it.

"Why would I have a problem with you?" Lance asks with a sweet smile. "We're a team. You and I. Me and you!" He laughs.

"Then why won't you let me in?" Lance tries to shift away from the sword but Keith digs it in, forcing Lance's shoulders back to the ground. He stands over Lance, boots between Lance's spread knees. "Why do you always have to..." He snaps his mouth shut.

"What are you even talking about?" Lance's tone is nonchalant. Flippant.

Keith's knuckles are white on the hilt of his sword. "When we _form_ , asshole. Your mind is..." He makes a frustrated sound. "I feel like I'm trying to push through this wall of glass. I can see through it but nothing I ever see is _real_ , it's just what you _want_ me to see, it's not. It's not, none of it, is real." Keith's mouth flattens into a tight line, and the weight of his gaze is burned into Lance's mind as his angry footsteps fade into the corridor.

 

Lance squirms under the sheets. It's still so early in the morning. He's trying to go back to sleep, but he just feels so goddamn...

Restless? Hot? Oversensitive?

Oh. Horny.

He flops over onto his stomach, rolling his hips into the mattress. Yeah. That's it. Heat begins to swell between his legs and he hums in satisfaction. He rolls his hips again.

It's always easy for him to conjure up any number of fantastic mental images. Abby. Cristina. Meg. His old History teacher. Nyma holding him in her lap, one large, alien hand on his lower back, the other on his ass. His head between Allura's thighs.

Aw, yeah.

He lifts his hips so he can shove a hand down between his legs, to the tightening fabric of his briefs. He grinds down into his palm, biting down on his lower lip.

Between Allura's thighs, but she's standing up, standing over him, arms crossed, absolutely all her attention focused on Lance, pinning him down with a haughty smirk.

Aw, fuck.

 

"Morning!" Lance calls into the mess hall. The only response he gets is from Hunk, and it's only a half-hearted little wave over a half-finished bowl of goo. Pidge is sitting beside him, and seems too busy with the innards of some Altean tech to even bother with food. Keith is nowhere to be seen, and Lance feels a stab of annoyance. "Geez, guys, way to greet the day. Where's Keith?"

Hunk rolls his eyes. "I dunno, Lance, shouldn't we be the ones asking you that?"

"Huh?" Lance laughs, and disappears into the kitchen to dispense himself some goo. When he comes back in the room Pidge's level, piercing gaze follows him all the way from the door to the table. Lance stares back, an uncomfortable thread unspooling in his stomach.

"Since right now approximately two thirds of everything you say relates to Keith somehow," Pidge clarifies, finally. "Hunk is jealous."

"No I'm not," Hunk protests.

"Come on. Guys! I'm just trying to get to know him. It's not exactly _easy_ , and I don't see either of _you_ trying too hard..."

Pidge lightly slaps the table. "So _that's_ the preferred method for 'getting to know someone'. Insulting them to their face."

"So what! I'm having to get creative. Like I said. It's not exactly easy."

Hunk frowns. "OK, guys, seriously, change the subject. I am so sick of this." Lance huffs and rolls his eyes. "I cannot _wait_ until we get to form again and the two of you stop acting so _weird_ around each other for five minutes."

"I thought you wanted to change the subject," Lance sneers.

 

Keith is back on the training deck. This time Lance manages to sneak in without Keith noticing, which is honestly kind of a big deal. He just had to wait for the right moment, when Keith was on the offensive, and use that momentary distraction to slip inside. He circles the wall, making sure to keep Keith's back to him, until Keith dispatches the training robot and pauses, panting, his free hand coming up to push the hair up off the back of his neck. He has the short sleeves of his black t-shirt pushed up over his shoulders, and yeah, so what, Lance has biceps, now, too, after all the rifle wielding and Lion piloting and...

"Hey," Lance calls, and Keith doesn't even hesitate to sling his sword in Lance's direction, straight through the air, like a javelin. Lance barely manages to duck out of the way, and the sword clatters across the floor. "Whoa! Dude! What's your problem?"

"Don't sneak up on me."

Lance scrambles for the sword. He lifts it, swishes it through the air. It's the first time he's actually lifted it. It's heavier than he thought it would be. Not as heavy as his rifle, but still. "Are you mad?" Keith watches him pose, arms crossed.

"Not yet." Lance laughs and tosses the sword back to Keith. It's a bad throw, too far to the right, but Keith manages to catch it by the hilt, anyway, that dick.

"Yet?" Lance strokes his chin, waggling his eyebrows. "Hmm..."

Keith continues to watch him, face completely blank, and sheathes his bayard with a flash of light.

"So, hypothetically, if someone were to want to change that 'not yet' into a 'yes,' what would someone, hypothetically, have to do?"

Keith actually laughs. The sound of it is breathy, messy, unpracticed, like the rusty hinges of an unused door. Something catches in Lance's chest. "Probably, just, uh. Keep talking."

"Aw, yeah. You know I got that down. How long till we get to this planet we're going to, again? Isn't it like, another week? At least? I don't know if I'm gonna make it. Can you _believe_ that no one wants to hang out with me? Coran banned me from helping them in the engine room after that one incident with the, you know..." He draws the silhouette of a particular piece of alien technology that he's not even really sure the function of in the air and mimes balancing it on one finger. "I mean, it's not like I wanna be doing _work_. I dunno how Pidge can stand it, working on shit over breakfast in the mess hall, I mean...and have you even seen Shiro or Allura today? Or yesterday? I guess they're doing diagnostics or something. They're always doing diagnostics. I mean, no wonder I've been hanging out with you."

Keith's eyes narrow, like he wants to debate that phrasing, but Lance continues right on.

"Can you believe Hunk is jealous? Maybe if he wasn't an actual engineer who knows shit about, you know. Flight. Stuff," he mimes a ship flying through the air with his hand, "I'd be able to hang out with him more."

Keith's eyebrows furrow in confusion. "Hunk is jealous? Of what?"

"Oh, nothing, nothing!" Lance pitches his voice high, half singsong. Keith's mouth tightens.

"Lance, meet me in the rec room, please." Shiro's voice echoes over the loudspeaker. He sounds tired. Maybe a little mad. Mostly tired.

"What did _I_ do?" Lance yells at the ceiling, as if Shiro is up there, listening. "I didn't do anything!"

"See you later," Keith says, and all Lance wants to do is to keep shoving him until that self-satisfied little smirk drops off his face.

 

"I didn't do anything!"

Shiro sighs. "Just sit down."

Lance edges over to one of the couches and sits awkwardly on the arm. "Coran won't even let me in the engine room anymore so it's definitely not me that did anything, if anything, you know, happened..."

Shiro sits forward, arms on his knees. "Nothing happened, Lance, I just wanted to talk."

"Uh..." Lance twists his fingers together. "OK?"

"I thought a break from structured training during this trip would be beneficial for everyone, but I think that might have been a mistake."

"O...K?" Lance is frozen on the arm of the couch, eyes wide.

"I'm going to be perfectly clear. Whatever issues you and Keith have with each other at the moment _will_ be ironed out by the time we drop into orbit around Yven."

"Oh my god!" Lace throws his hands in the air. "Seriously?"

"Lance..."

"Are Hunk and Pidge talking about me behind my back? They don't know shit! Everything's fine between me and Keith."

"Lance, I'm not joking."

"Me either!" Lance shoves himself off the arm of the couch and stomps off toward the door.

Keith isn't on the training deck anymore, and that makes Lance's mood even worse. Great. He's probably holed up in his Lion and won't show his face again for _hours_. He could use some bonding time with Blue, anyway. Blue understands him. She's probably the only one, he thinks, raising his chin, shoving himself off the doorframe.

"Hey, Blue," Lance says, dropping into the pilot's seat, squirming around until he's draped over the arms in the most tragic way possible. "Everyone is being. So. _Dumb_."

Amusement touches his mind. Amusement, with a slight cruel undertone.

He loves Blue.

She reflects Lance's own mental impression of Keith back at him, somehow combined with the lilt of a question. _This one?_

"Yeah, everyone thinks I have a problem with Keith but I _don't_. I just..." He huffs and squirms again in his seat. "I dunno."

The impression of red, red, red, swims in his mind, a tidal wave threatening to drown him. Excitement. Fury. Desperation. Joy.

Lance sits bolt upright. "Yes! Oh my god, Blue, that's it exactly." He flops back again, lolling his head. "It's like. I _know_ him, now. We all do. I know what he's _like_! But the rest of the time he won't ever _show_ it, ugh he's just so...and I..."

 _None of it is real,_ the memory of Keith's voice echoes back at him from Blue. _Like trying to push through this wall of glass._ Lance lets out a petulant huff.

"OK, that's fair, I guess," Lance says, begrudgingly, fidgeting with the armrests of his seat. "I don't really know what he's talking about, though. It's not like I'm doing that on purpose. I don't think I am, anyway, I mean..."

 _Not honest,_ Lance thinks Blue is saying.

"What are you talking about? I'm like, always honest. Everyone always says I'm _too_ honest, for crying out loud!"

There's that same slightly cruel amusement again, then the impression of the first item on a long, long list. Then Lance's own mental construction of Keith flashes back at him: a flip of hair. Shoulders. Narrow waist, narrow hips, skinny legs, and, the overwhelming feeling of frustration that accompanies that image.

"What about him?"

The image comes again, intensified, for longer, for too long, until Lance is shifting in his seat, uncomfortable.

"Quit it! Blue! Seriously! I don't understand! What about him?"

The feeling bursting from Blue is the most like laughter Lance has ever felt from her.


	2. Chapter 2

Keith is curled up in the pilot's seat of his Lion, shoulders tense. This place is starting to get to him. It's worse than the desert. He missed flying, then, like it was a part of himself that had been lost, and his bike had been an inferior replacement. There were periods when he wouldn't leave his cabin at all for months at a time, but at least then he had research. He had internet. He'd spend the most blistering months of summer getting paid to work hours upon hours on various crowdsourced projects. Tedious stuff, but it meant he could pay for the food he needed to have delivered via drone to his GPS coordinates.

Claustrophobia isn't the right word, because then why would he feel better inside the cramped cockpit of his Lion? Even if he never opened the curtains during the winter back at the cabin he knew he could look out and see the stars. Right now while they travel by wormhole there's nothing but blackness out every window.

Keith is pretty sure it's something about light particles not traveling fast enough to be seen from the ship, and he feels so stupid. How does looking at stars while trapped on the surface of a planet feel more free than the actual physical act of traveling halfway across the universe? How can traveling ten miles by bike feel like going so much farther than traveling a hundred trillion by space castle?

The image of an ink colored marble swims in his mind's eye. Lights prickle its surface.

"This galaxy? No. The universe?"

Red seems to hum in agreement. The image zooms in, faster and faster, until it eventually slows to a steady pace. Clusters of stars zoom past, quick, like road signs on the highway. Larger clusters loom in the distance, enormous but within reach, if he pushes on just a little longer, a little faster.

"You're showing me in a way my inferior human brain can understand? Is that it?"

A fierce affirmative blares in his mind, and Keith snorts. He watches galaxies rush past for a long time, slowly leaning his head back into the headrest of his seat, slowly unknotting his muscles one by one, or at least, trying to.

"No, I know that's not the only thing bothering me, but I don't want to talk about anything else right now, OK?" Red had interrupted his train of thought.

_No_

"Why does everyone want to talk to me about Lance? I'm kind of trying not to think about him right now."

Red tosses a memory at him, careless, in a way that makes Keith grit his teeth. It's the memory of Lance, head pillowed in Keith's lap, after Lance had told Keith what a good team they made and promptly lost consciousness. He'd held Lance around the shoulders, waiting for the others to bring a stretcher down from the healing bay. Lance had looked awful. Pale. The back of his armor was a charred mess. He'd probably saved Keith's life. The only completely sincere thing Keith had ever heard Lance say echoed around in his head, over and over and over and over, and he'd realized how much about Lance he didn't _know_. How many things would be lost, if Lance were gone. How many things would go undiscovered. It was a physical ache in his chest, in his throat.

"Yeah, I know, OK?" Keith throws up his hands. "What am I supposed to do, exactly? He doesn't even remember. He doesn't give a. Single. Fuck. That I thought he was going to die. And it's been ages since that happened, anyway."

_So you give up_

"No!"

_Wasting time_

"Wasting time instead of doing _what_? What's supposed to happen, exactly? I don't even think he wants to be _friends_!" Keith snaps his mouth shut, heat crawling up his neck and over his face.

_Why not_

"I said I didn't want to talk about this!" Keith snaps. Red pulls back from his mind, growling, and everything is silent.

 

After what could have been hours Keith finally climbs out of his Lion and out of his hangar. The door to the main corridor slides open with a dry hiss, and when he glances along the hallway he sees Lance absently kicking at the wall, all the way down by the door to his own hangar.

"Keith! Hi! Yeah, I was just," Lance calls, and gets his legs tangled up while trying to turn. "Communing with Blue." He leans back against the doorframe, legs crossed, like he meant to do it.

"Yeah?" Keith kicks himself for phrasing that like a question.

"You too? Communing? Exercising your psychic mind link with an alien robot lion?"

"Yeah," Keith calls, again, this time in the form of a statement.

"Cool," Lance responds after a long moment, and Keith suddenly wonders if Lance had followed him down here. He narrows his eyes. Why would...

"Do you want to hang out or something?" Keith yells.

"What? No! I mean. Yes?"

Keith can feel Lance's eyes on him as he walks down the hall towards the door to the main living area of the ship. When he turns to go through the soles of Lance's shoes squeak on the tile behind him.

"So, what are we doing?" Lance asks.

"Training."

"Wow, yeah, I don't even know why I asked. Don't you ever want to do anything else?"

"Uh, yes? Obviously?" He stares back over his shoulder at Lance, who shrugs.

"Could've fooled me."

Keith stops in his tracks. "What else am I supposed to be doing right now? It's not like we can just go to the movies, or...or whatever, there is literally nothing to do on this ship but learn to fight and I'm not going to spend this trip lying around all the time complaining about how there's nothing to do when I can be _better_..."

Lance rolls his eyes. "Yeah, I _guess_." God, Lance is being so overdramatic. Whiny.

"Go hang out with someone else if you don't want to train."

"Keith..." Lance drags out his name like it has ten "e"s and five "i"s. "If I wanted to hang out with someone else I'd be hanging out with someone else."

"Uh." Keith frowns. "Thanks? I think."

Lance does double finger-guns. Waggles his eyebrows. "No problem." Keith turns and keeps walking. "'The movies'?"

Keith's shoulders tighten. "It was just an example."

"Because what I'm hearing is, you wanna go to a movie with me."

"Whatever. Sure. If that was an option, yeah, why not." Keith hazards a glance back at Lance, who shrugs, grinning, tilting his chin.

When they get to the training deck Lance immediately starts running, unsheathing his bayard, dodging and weaving like he's in an action movie. "Come on! One on one! Let's go!"

"I was thinking we should just...Hey!" A rifle blast hits the wall near Keith's head. "Stop shooting at me!"

"You first!" Lance cackles.

"But I'm not even...Lance!" Another shot ricochets off the doorframe. "Maybe we should work...agh! Together!"

"Like co op? Maybe." Lance draws out the word, lowering his rifle, one hand cupping his chin. "Just us?"

Keith looks from one side to the other. "Uh. Yeah."

"Because you know you would lose if we went one on one."

Keith stares. "I just beat you last night!"

"Only 'cause I let you."

Keith grits his teeth. Is Lance being serious? And if not, which part is the joke? Keith feels no closer to understanding Lance's sense of humor than he was at the beginning of this mess. A resigned exhaustion pulls at his mind. What is he even doing? For one endless moment, it all seems so pointless.

"So are we doing this, or what?" Lance looks up at Keith from underneath his lashes in a sly half-grin, bending forward, hands on his hips, and Keith hunches his shoulders at the warmth beginning a slow crawl up his neck.

They go up against a swarm of small drones, eighty in all. Columns, a meter in diameter, rise from the training deck floor to provide them with cover. The drones zoom between the columns in formations, ready to shoot the hell out of them. Alteans weren't fucking around. The lasers don't do any actual damage but they _hurt_.

At first, the two of them are completely on point. A grouping of three drones cruises by and almost catches them from behind, but Keith puts his sword into the one in the center while Lance takes out the ones flanking it with two quick shots. Just in time they duck out of the way of a larger group of nine, flying in a square, three by three. Keith's sword takes out two whole rows with a swift downswing, but when Lance fires at the remaining row, he misses them all.

They spend the next several minutes running full speed around the deck from the drones, which are now aggroed.

"You knocked them all...out of whack!" Lance yells, narrowly avoiding being stung on the shoulder by a drone's laser.

Keith ducks behind a column, leans against it, tries to catch his breath. His lungs are on fire. "No, you _missed_!"

"No I didn't!" Lance yells from a few rows over. "OK, yeah, fine, I missed, but just because _you_..." His sentence is drowned out by lasers. There's a loud yelp, and Keith stumbles out from behind his own column to take out the drones, one after the other, that had pinned Lance to the floor with a flurry of laser fire.

"Oh, my, fucking, god," Lance wails, curling in upon himself. "That fucking _hurt_..."

Their second go around also has a promising start. They manage to stay completely out of sight for a good twenty minutes and take out sixty-seven of the drones without alerting any of the others to their presence.

They're standing back to back, covering each other as they make their way around the far corner of the deck. Before Keith can even comprehend what's happened, he's on his face on the floor, his back a paralyzing mess of pain from the stinging shocks of the drones' lasers.

"Ha! Now we're even!" Lance is bending over him. Keith grits his teeth and pushes himself up into a sitting position. He rubs at the back of his neck, tries to reach back over his shoulder blades. That _hurt._

"Wait a second, did you just...duck?" Keith stares up at Lance, incredulous. "And let me get shot?"

"I didn't _duck_ , I dodged. But like I said. Now we're even!" That fucking grin. That. Fucking. Grin. Lance offers Keith a hand up but Keith doesn't take it, just shoves himself up off the ground. They'd been doing so _well._ If Lance could've kept it up for another ten minutes Keith knows they would have been able to do it. There are fifty levels to this training program, each more and more difficult than the one before. And if they can't even make it through the _first_ one...

"We were so close!" Keith's voice comes out louder than he means for it to. "Why would you just..."

"It's only _fair_ ," Lance says and shrugs, all innocent smile, hooded eyes.

"The only reason you got shot in the first place was because you fucked up!"

"We're a team. If I fuck up, you fuck up, right? So it's half your fault because you're half the team."

"That doesn't even make any sense!" Keith is officially yelling.

"OK, OK, I'll be serious. See? I'm being serious." Lance narrows his eyes, frowning in concentration. "See?"

"Yes!" Keith snaps. "Fine. We'll try it again."

The third time they take out seventy-one drones. They're so close. The last nine might be in one formation, or two, or three. Keith is getting more and more on edge. They can do this. They can beat this level. They've done harder missions in real life.

The deck is enormous, and there are so many columns that they can't see farther than about ten feet in any direction. Nervousness hangs around them like a cloud of sticky smoke.

There's a hum in the air to Keith's left, faint, but audible. The drones.

Lance taps Keith's shoulder, then gestures back the way they came. He draws a U sideways in the air, then points vigorously at the source of the sound. Keith nods.

The next thing he knows he's on the ground. Lance is laughing himself silly, leaning against a column.

They.

Lost.

"Lance!" Keith yells from the floor. "It's not funny!"

Again.

Anger rises in Keith's chest, boiling, burning at the back of his throat. "You did that on purpose!" Lance is gasping with laughter, arms around his middle. He shakes his head, unable to talk. "No, you _did_ , I'm not falling for this shit anymore!"

Lance just keeps laughing until Keith turns and disappears between the columns. "Keith!" Lance's voice is still thick with laughter. "Keith! Come on! I didn't _do_ anything, I just..."

Keith walks faster, walks until he's completely out of earshot and doesn't have to hear the rest of Lance's bullshit justifications for being a complete and total dick all the time to everyone.

This wasn't going to work.

This was never going to work.

 

"No, I still don't want to talk about it, Red, OK?" Keith grits his teeth and crosses his legs, one ankle over his knee. He rubs his forehead where his brows have been knitted tightly together for what feels like hours. He tries to relax, but he can't.

_Stupid_

"Tell me something I don't know," Keith snaps. "It's all stupid. It's all just _so stupid._ He's stupid. _I'm_ stupid. He _makes_ me stupid."

The image of Lance's half-smile and hooded eyes slaps up against Keith's mind's eye, like a flier on a glass window.

" _Yes_ , Red, I _know_ ," Keith growls. "I know! But fine. Fine! You want to hear me say it? He's attractive. I'm attracted to him! I'm attracted to him and I _hate_ it."

_Amusement_

"Are you happy now!" Keith starts to yell but it turns into a laugh on the way out that's impossible to bite back.


	3. Chapter 3

Lance pounds on Hunk's door for ages until it swishes open. Hunk is in pyjamas, eyes wide, one hand clutched over his chest. "What? What! Is someone dead? Please tell me someone isn't dead."

Lance is leaning on the doorframe, arms crossed tightly over his chest. "No." He sighs, lethargically. "I just miss being roommates."

Hunk lets out a long breath. He seems to consider this. "Yeah, me too." Lance kicks the ball of one sneaker against the floor. "Not enough to actually want to be roommates again, though, no offense, man."

Lance smirks. "None taken!"

"So..." Hunk glances over his shoulder at his dim room, at the rumpled sheets on his bed. Lance unconsciously starts to peer around him, ready to walk inside, ready to...come on already, Hunk... "OK, OK, fine, what do I need sleep for anyway?" Hunk heads back inside, hitting the switch for the overheads on the way in. Lance follows, light on his feet, humming a little to himself.

The two of them sit crosslegged on Hunk's bed, and Hunk deals them each half the deck of their own homemade playing cards. As far as any of them know, aliens just haven't invented playing cards. Playing cards, television, and music that makes any goddamn sense. Good luck finding any of those things on an alien planet.

At one point Lance, Keith, Hunk and Pidge had cut up a bunch of this alien paper that probably wasn't actually paper, but seemed close. They each claimed a suit to draw out, to split up the work. Lance is still proud of his. His queen of hearts has what Lance would consider to be A+ tits. Well. If he could draw. Turns out the only one that could draw at all was Pidge. Most of Hunk's cards are practically incomprehensible, and Keith's are just numbers and suits. Lance can just imagine him glaring down at each card, mouth twisted in concentration, as he carefully botches the shape of absolutely every club he tries to draw.

Heh.

Keith.

"So everything's, like, OK, right?" Hunk asks. They both turn up the cards on the tops of their decks. Lance does a little victory dance and grabs both.

"Yeah, I guess." They draw.

"I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, here, but you don't usually just drop in like this in the middle of the night."

Lance shrugs and takes two more cards. "Couldn't sleep."

"That sucks, man." They both place three cards, flip the third face up. Hunk takes all six.

"This trip is like. The worst thing that's ever happened to me."

"Huh. OK."

"Seriously. I mean my life has been so incredibly awesome up until this point." Hunk is looking at him. "Come on, what's your card?"

Hunk flips it and loses the hand. He wins the next round, though, and the one after that. "I think you're right. This trip is like. The worst. Hey, uh. Sorry I got so mad yesterday."

"Yeah, see?"

Hunk takes the card Lance is holding out. "I hate being mad."

They play in silence for a while. Hunk gathers almost the whole deck. Usually Lance would be making a big deal about this, but he feels so strange. Off his game. "I think I really pissed Keith off earlier. Like. Really bad."

Hunk smacks a hand to his forehead. "Lance..."

"I didn't mean to! I mean, I did, at first, but it wasn't actually my fault, I swear!"

Hunk's hand drops back down to his knee. "Look, man, you can tell me. Seriously. What is going on with you?"

"It's not _me_ , it's _him_!"

"OK," Hunk says slowly, "and what the heck is that supposed to mean?"

Lance notices he's stalling their game. He quickly flips his card. "I dunno. I guess." He wins the hand. "I just don't understand him."

"I'm still not getting the picture."

"Come on, Hunk! You know him. You've been, up there," Lance says, drawing curlicues around his head with one finger. "You know what he's like."

"Uh, yeah," Hunk begins, then frowns. "I...guess?"

Lance lets out a long, exasperated sigh and flops over sideways onto the bed. "He's just so...he just. _Feels_ , like. So much _stuff_. But he, like, never _shows_ it," Lance grumbles into the blanket.

"...And?"

"Ugh, Hunk, come on," Lance groans, rolling onto his back, slinging an arm over his eyes. His legs hang off the edge of the mattress. "Don't make me say it, it sounds fucking weird." He peeks past his arm. Hunk is still staring at him.

The silence stretches out for one beat, then two, then three. "Oh my god, fine. You are _killing_ me. Get back up here so we can finish this game. This is so dumb."

Lance sits up, grinning ear to ear. He wins the next three rounds.

"Why can't you make friends with anyone the normal way?" Hunk mutters. "You're like some kind of cat, creature, thing. You always wanna leave your scent all over people, but instead of scent you leave behind this feeling of like, constant harassment."

Lance laughs. "What?"

 

Lance wakes up with a snort, sprawled over the foot of Hunk's bed. Hunk is breathing deeply at the head of it. Cards are still strewn over the covers between them, still mostly set to play the two person game of solitaire they'd invented at one point, which really is only sort of fun. It keeps turning out not to be very well playtested. Cascading failures, Hunk kept groaning about.

He slips out of the room, switching off the lights as he passes. The hallway has the same level of constant, blue-cast light that it always has, and Lance's chest clenches for like the five hundred billionth time with the ache of missing the Sun.

Sure, they've seen other suns. They've been on planets with loads of suns. But none of them are the same.

Not even close.

No other star is that perfect distance, that perfect size, to send that perfect brand of punch-drunk heat over your skin. No other star burns that exact right shade of yellow. No other star shines down on a planet twenty-four hours a day, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year, and who knows what time it even is now? Time has lost all meaning without the Earth's local astronomy. Lance has no better idea of how long they've been out in space than he does of how long he'd just been asleep. Is it late? Is it early? Who cares. It doesn't even matter what time it is. It's not like...

It's not like Keith was going to hang out with him?

Is that what he was just about to think?

Lance walks faster towards his room, frowning deeper and deeper. Keith won't leave his mind, now. His image sticks there, legs and waist and shoulders and hair. Frustration and anticipation. Lance hunches and crosses his arms over the weird feeling in his chest.

He doesn't get to sleep again for hours.

 

When Lance finally stumbles out of bed there's no one in the shower room, no one in the mess hall. Keith isn't even on the training deck. They're probably all doing something useful or something, Lance thinks with a touch of bitterness.

"Hey, Blue." Lance kicks his feet out in front of him in his pilot's seat. "How long until we can fly again?"

The image of time stretching exponentially farther and farther into the future blooms in his mind.

Lance laughs. "You too, huh?"

One piece of five separated from the whole. Resigned longing.

"You miss forming?" Lance drops his head back against his seat. "Yeah, same." His eyelids feel heavy, so he gives in and closes them. "Ask Red if Keith is with her, willya?"

With the underlying lilt of a question, two pieces of five separated from a whole click together like magnets.

"Uh, OK, what?" Lance frowns, but Blue is gone from his mind. Is that it? Does he miss forming so much that he's going off the deep end a little? Lance guesses that's possible. Everything is so _easy_ , when they're all sharing thoughts. Easy and perfect. No guesswork.

The rest of the time Keith is nothing but guesswork. Like a test Lance forgot to study for. Or worse, like those ones you actually try to prepare for, try really hard, but fail anyway.

The image of Keith curled up in his pilot's seat flashes into Lance's mind. He unconsciously mimics Keith's position in his own chair. He's sure Keith misses flying. Lance misses it. Badly. And he isn't anything compared to Keith in the air.

_Good_

Lance flushes. "Shut up. I obviously know he's better than me."

There's an image of Lance at the center of a circle of people, talking, laughing, pulling everyone's attention. Keith is on the outside, alone. Observing. Lonely, but resigned to it.

"He doesn't think so? Though? Is that what you mean?" Lance frowns.

Keith in the middle of a dense crowd, anonymous faces stacked hundreds deep, unseeing, uncaring. The feeling of being enclosed. Trapped.

"OK," Lance says, slowly.

A wall, thick glass like that of an aquarium. The silence around him is deafening, the air itself absolutely vibrating with energy, with static. He pounds on the wall with one fist, slaps it with both hands, but he's never going to be able to get through. He realizes suddenly that it's not just a wall, but a box that he's trapped in, with no door, no window, no way out at all.

"Is...Red telling you this stuff?" Lance asks after a moment. His voice comes out strange.

_Yes_

"I don't get it." Except he does. Or at least, he's starting to.

There's that image again, of two fifth-sized pieces, snapping together.

 

Lance waits for Keith on the training deck for what feels like hours. He even started doing a little target practice to pass the time, but he's off his game, completely unable to concentrate, and he gives up. He spends a while on his back on the floor, staring intently at the ceiling, pushing himself along the slick tiles with each shove of a sneaker.

Finally there are footsteps in the hall, and Lance sits bolt upright. Crosses his legs. Shit, that still looks weird. Why would he just be sitting crosslegged in the middle of the floor? Nope, too late...

"Hey," Lance yells when Keith steps into the room, sees him, and immediately turns to leave. Lance stumbles to his feet. "Don't go! I've got to talk to you! Seriously!" His voice comes out kind of strangled, and about a full octave higher than he means for it to.

Keith freezes. "What...about?" He sounds nervous.

"Come with me to the rec room," Lance blurts out, like it's all one word.

Silence stretches out for a long, long moment. "OK," Keith yells, finally, and Lance takes off running in a burst of giddy energy. He brushes past Keith and through the doorway. "Come on!"

"We're running there?" Keith calls from behind him over the sound of their sneakers slapping the floor.

"Yes!" Lance shucks off his jacket and bundles it up under one arm, mid-stride. Keith doesn't say anything else, but his presence doesn't fade from beside Lance's shoulder the whole way there.

The rec room is empty. Lance slings his own jacket onto one of the couches and throws himself face first onto the one opposite, gasping for air. It is a _long ass way_ from the training deck to the rec room. Keith strips off his jacket and flops down on the corner of the couch perpendicular to Lance's, his knees inches from Lance's forehead. They sit in silence, panting. One sleeve of Keith's jacket hangs off the edge of the couch.

"OK, why did you bring us here?" Keith asks, finally.

Lance pushes himself up onto his arms. Stares up at Keith. "Hey, man, look, I'm sorry."

The statement seems to take a moment to sink in. "What?"

"I was fucking around a lot yesterday and I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't've been fucking around so much."

Keith's eyebrows are practically sharing space with his hairline. "Uh, thanks?"

Lance rolls off the couch and staggers to the wall with the storage spaces. He pulls out two of those mind-meldy headband things, whatever they're actually called. Keith sits motionless except for the rapid rise and fall of his chest. Lance's lungs burn and his heart is still racing.

"Here," Lance says, triumphantly, dropping the headpiece into Keith's lap. He grabs Keith's discarded jacket and throws it over by his own before plopping down on the couch beside him.

Keith grabs the headpiece. "What? You want to..." His almond shaped eyes go wide. "Why?" he demands.

Lance shoves his own headpiece onto his head. "Just like, mind meld with me, OK?" Lance pleads. They lock eyes, and Keith lifts the headpiece, slips it over his hair. Time slows.

Everything fades but the places their bodies touch the couch. Lance's crossed legs against the cushion, his shoulder against the back. Keith's elbow on the arm, the backs of his thighs against the edge. Nervousness. Trepidation. Excitement. Lance leans closer.

Exasperated curiosity. Why are they doing this?

Lance wants to, that's why.

Oh.

Lance is swallowed by darkness. Sort of. Darkness in the center of a whirling vortex, like the eye of a hurricane. Still, but under the surface everything vibrates at an impossible frequency. Vibrant. Overwhelming. Lance has a thrill go straight through him. He missed this.

Missed this? Humiliation, disbelief, striking and electric. Missed what?

This! A wide gesture, indicating everything.

Confusion. Missed...me? Self deprecation, looming over a tiny shred of hope.

Obviously.

Not obviously. Not obviously at all.

Knuckles rapping on a door, with no answer. I'm _trying_.

The knocking stops. Instead of a person outside the door, there's a wildfire, out of control.

You're joking, right?

The slow burn of embarrassment. Shame. I don't get you. The image of a half circle, warm, good, fluttering on the inside with breathless hesitation and the other half, dark and confused, humiliation and shame twisting together, oozing and awful.

Oh. Lance withdraws, shocked.

Keith follows him. Sorry.

They're back in school together. Lance is on the ground in a flight suit, helmet under one arm, waiting for his turn to do flying drills. He knows without question which jet is Keith's: it dances on the air like a feather, effortlessly looping and diving, and Lance loves to watch him, Keith is amazing.

The confusion doubles. Why are you so mean to me? It's plaintive, almost childish. Are you being serious? I can't tell. A low, continuous buzz of anxiety.

Yes I'm serious, Lance thinks, not without irritation. Obviously. You know how good you are.

Not obviously.

What?

Not obviously at all. We're wasting time. While we're here. Just tell me. I want to know. Where _are_ you? Keith is a warm presence beside him on the tarmac.

Uh. Right here?

No, no, no. This is a memory. Where are _you_.

I'm right here! Where the hell else would I be?

The impression of a hand in his, of walking. Come on.

They're together in the rough hallways of the Balmera, communicating without words. In the forests outside the city of Darmath, where they worked together on a scouting mission. On the training deck, yesterday, before Lance decided to start being an idiot. Out in the depths of space, Blue badly damaged from falling out of the malfunctioning wormhole, where Lance had drifted for days alone, alone, alone, and Keith's was the first voice he'd heard, as if from a dream.

No, that's _me_ , dumbass.

I don't understand what you want! They sit together in Blue's cockpit, Lance in the seat, Keith leaning on the console, hands on his knees.

I want to understand what _you_ want, is what I want. And much quieter, the underthought of: and I don't even know if I should keep trying.

Please keep trying, erupts from Lance in a flood of desperate emotion that's impossible to hide.

Silence. Surprise. Fear. Happiness?

Lance rips off his headset, heart pounding, eyes like saucers. Keith is staring at him, sitting bolt upright on the couch, eyes just as wide, lips slowly parting. "I, uh..."

"You..." Keith begins, then falls silent, still staring. He slowly pulls off his own headset, his chest quickly rising and falling.

Whatever Lance is trying to say won't come out. "I'm uh..." Frustration burns in his throat. His hands flex on his knees. On impulse he lunges forward, grabs Keith around the middle with both arms, and buries his face in his chest.

Keith's heart races against his cheek. His arms go tightly around Lance's shoulders, and the two of them topple into the couch, Keith backwards, Lance forwards. They lie there for ages and just breathe. Keith's heartbeat isn't slowing, though, and Lance is suddenly aware that his isn't, either, not by a long shot. 

He pushes himself up on his forearms and and gets caught by Keith's eyes. "What's going on here, exactly?" Keith asks. His voice is low. Breathy.

"I dunno," Lance admits. He doesn't move. His face is burning. Keith's eyes are half lidded, and they take up almost his entire field of vision.

One of Keith's gloved hands leaves his shoulder blade to roughly cup the back of his skull. Lance shudders, warmth flaring hot in his midsection. "What do you _want_ , Lance," Keith mutters, and it's the sound of that sulky, clipped "t" that makes Lance imagine, with perfect crystal clarity, what it would be like to shove his mouth against Keith's.

"What I really want is a BLT. Like. From Earth. I've been craving one like, so bad, the past couple of days," Lance blurts out. Their faces are approximately six inches apart.

Keith's eyebrows knit together. His mouth tightens into an angry line. He squirms out from under Lance and up off the couch. He grabs his jacket.

"Whoa! Keith! Wait! No, no, no! What are you doing?"

"Apparently nothing!" Keith yells over his shoulder as he marches out the door.


	4. Chapter 4

"Shiro, what's your twenty?" Keith finally stops pacing back and forth across his bedroom to scoop up his helmet and shove it onto his head.

"My quarters," Shiro responds after a moment.

Keith hesitates. He chews on his lower lip. "Can I talk to you?"

"Come on over."

Keith drops his helmet back down on the table. That channel is open to all the paladins, so there's a chance that Lance now knows he's going to talk to Shiro, and it wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why. Humiliation twists in his stomach.

Who cares. Who cares what Lance thinks, anyway.

The door to Shiro's room hisses open and Keith marches past him. He sits down abruptly at Shiro's table, kicks his feet out in front of him, crosses his ankles. Shiro sits across from him, his arms folded on the tabletop.

"Keith, is everything OK?"

"Yeah," Keith mutters. "Lance is just kind of. Driving me up the wall right now."

Shiro frowns. "He told me everything was fine between you two."

"Maybe it _was_."

Shiro's eyebrows shoot upwards. "Did something happen?"

"Yes," Keith snaps. His face is hot, and getting hotter. "He can't take anything seriously. He can _never_ take anything seriously." He keeps his eyes trained carefully on the tabletop.

"Is that why you've been so angry?"

"Yeah I guess," Keith mutters, hunching down in his chair. Why did he think this would be a good idea? He feels like a goddamned kid again, sitting stony-faced in a chair in the principal's office.

"You know you can tell me anything," Shiro says. His voice is gentle but serious, and the burning knot of fury lodged in Keith's throat starts to dissipate, just a little. OK. Maybe this was why.

"Yeah. I know. Thanks." Keith swallows. "I, uh. There was just. Something we both, were, gonna do. But Lance couldn't stop joking around for two seconds and he _ruined_ it."

"I see."

No he doesn't, Keith thinks, frustrated. His explanation had come out sounding so childish, like all they'd been doing together was building a tower of blocks or skipping rope or something. "I mean. He's _always_ doing that. But this time felt like just. The last straw. I guess." He feels somewhat deflated. "That sounds really stupid."

"No, it doesn't."

Keith stares at the floor.

"Why do you think he keeps doing it?" Shiro asks.

"I'm starting not to care," Keith says, bitterly. "No, I. Uh." He hunches. "I dunno."

"Do you think he might just want your attention?"

_Knuckles rapping on a door, with no answer._ "He already _had_ my attention," Keith mutters. "But uh. Yeah maybe. I guess. Probably."

"It seems like Lance hasn't had a lot of people try to actually get to know him in his life. He might not know what to do with that kind of attention when he actually gets it."

Keith's brow furrows. "Yeah I guess."

"And I could probably say the same thing about you," Shiro says, gentle but pointed.

Keith ducks in upon himself. His face is absolutely burning. "I guess, maybe you could."

 

The door to Shiro's room shuts behind him and Keith heads off immediately back to his own.

Irritation and guilt burn in his gut. He'd made such a huge mistake.

Fuck. _Fuck_. He'd allowed his temper and his own desperate thirst for someone, anyone, to care only about _him_ for two goddamn minutes to topple over absolutely all of his common goddamned sense.

He grits his teeth in humiliation. Who's worse, him or Lance? Jesus fucking christ.

Keith stares inside his own bedroom door for god knows how long. What's he going to do, just go back in and keep pacing? No. No.

No.

He has to make this right.

There's no answer when he knocks on Lance's door, and none when he starts banging. Or when he starts yelling Lance's name along with the banging. He growls in frustration and flops backwards against the doorframe. Looks down the hallway.

Maybe Lance never left the rec room. Maybe he's waiting for Keith again on the training deck. Maybe he's in the mess hall.

He's not any of those places.

Keith slides down the wall outside the training deck and down onto the floor, his legs half crossed, arms on his knees. Anger burns behind his eyes. He knocks his head back against the wall.

Lance could be in his hangar, but if he is he might as well be on a different planet. Fuck. Fuck!

He can at least try to find out.

Red greets him with the strong undertone of _I was expecting you_ , and Keith tries very hard to ignore that. "Is Lance with Blue? Ask her."

_Affirmative_

An image blooms in Keith's mind's eye, as if through the bottom of a cobalt glass. Lance draped over his pilot's seat. Listlessly swinging one foot.

What does Lance even think of him now? What if, what if he doesn't want to continue what they'd started, what if they can't work this out? He just needs Lance to listen. He just needs to talk to him, just a little, just for a minute...

Despair. Loneliness. A twisted up knot of breathless giddiness and fear.

You didn't know you liked boys? Oh. My god. Lance! Keith sits as if stricken. The inside of his mind absolutely vibrates with the realization.

Keith? Mortification, sharp and sickening. Oh my god, what the _fuck_ are you doing here?

I didn't know we could do this? Red!

You can.

The image of two distinct spaces flowing into one another comes from what Keith realizes is Blue. Couldn't feel each other before. Minds not compatible enough.

First of your group to learn, blares Red.

Panic.

Lance, it's OK!

Waves on a beach. The warmth of the Sun, Blue pipes into the conversation, low, soothing, but with an undercurrent of amusement. Everything will be good.

I'm sorry, Keith blurts out.

Me too, Lance says, shaky. Anxious.

I didn't know this was gonna be. For you. A...thing? A crisis?

Seriously? Skepticism. Disbelief.

I thought you. Knew? A snapshot of a memory, for how it had been for Keith, from all the way back in his childhood. How looking at boys made him _feel_.

Wait, you're gay? What??

Oh. My god.

Seriously??

Annoyance. You are so fucking _dense_ , Lance, what the hell...

Red growls, low and threatening. Stop this.

Mind your own business! Keith snaps.

Your compatibility is our business, Blue puts in. It is our business most of all.

This is so fucked up, Lance thinks.

Keith can't help it. He collapses back into his seat, laughing. Look, Lance...

I'm trying.

I know you are. I'm sorry.

Turns out I don't hate you.

Uh, I never hated you.

Turns out maybe I just. Wanted? The image of hands, gripping clothes, of mouths, coming together, hot and slick. Panic, shame, heat.

Yeah. Before Keith knows what he's doing he's imagining them back on the couch, imagining himself grabbing handfuls of Lance's ass and yanking him close.

That's. A specific image, Lance thinks, and the thought is lined half with panic, half with a shaky, giddy excitement.

Yeah, it's one of my favorites. Keith winces. Oh. Fuck.

You've. Thought about me? Before? The emotions coming from Lance soak him like a tidal wave. Terror. Heat. Curiosity. A lot of curiosity. Quite a lot of curiosity.

Yeah, I guess, Keith thinks, feeling somewhat humiliated.

What...do you think about? Lance asks, tentatively. Another rush of that desperate curiosity.

A tangle of limbs, hands shoving Lance down, pulling him around, gathering him up. Keith is flushing from his chest to his hairline. Not very many specifics. Just want.

Oh

The image of Lance kneeling on the floor, Keith rucking up his short hair between his hands as Lance bobs his head between Keith's legs creeps in without Keith meaning for it to.

_Oh_

Silence

Fuck, fuck, Keith 

Shit shit I'm sorry

No no, no, don't, this is, just

Really fucking intense

Yeah

Keith's heart is racing. He can't get enough air. Sorry. His pulse is throbbing between his legs.

You too?

Yeah.

What should we do? Booty call via telepathic alien warships? Amusement tinged with terror.

Keith's eyes widen. M-maybe. Maybe so? Never, never done this before.

Seriously?

Haven't exactly had the chance, Keith thinks. Bitterness. The image of himself watching porn on his computer back at his cabin on Earth, curtains closed, fly undone.

Hot.

Fuck you.

Complete this conversation beforehand, trumpets Red.

Keith buries his face in his hands. That's it. I'm leaving.

A large, viscous droplet, slowly rolling down a pane of glass. Slow. Easy, Blue puts in. You have time.

The last thing Keith feels before he leaves his cockpit is Lance's humiliation, tinged with hilarity.

 

Keith gets back up to the main hallway first. He hangs around by the door to his hangar, hands clenched in his own sleeves. He isn't freaking out. He's not.

When Lance comes through his door they stare at each other from opposite ends of the hall for a few long beats before Lance is jogging towards him. They meet in the middle, out of breath.

"So, uh," Lance says, finally, "Should we, uh. Go somewhere?"

"Yeah." Keith feels like his face must match his jacket.

"Like. Uh. Back to the rec room? Or...do you want to. Come to my room?"

"Yes," Keith blurts out.

"Though, uh...Red thinks we should talk more first. Think maybe we should?" Lance looks at Keith from underneath his eyelashes. His grin is turning Keith's insides to soup.

"Shut up."

Lance chews on his lower lip. "I'm taking this better than I thought I would. Not that I thought I would? I think. Did I think I would? On, some level? Maybe? This is hard."

Keith grabs Lance's hand and drags him off down the hallway. Lance stumbles after him. His hand grips Keith's, tight.

"Ooh! Keith! This is so sudden," Lance coos in his ear.

"No it isn't."

"So you like boys, huh?"

"Yeah, I do."

"Like a lot?"

"Yes! Like a lot, Lance," Keith says, exasperated.

"Huh. You learn something new every day."

There's an awkward pause. "What about you?" Keith asks, finally, and wants to kick himself.

"Good question, man. What uh," Lance pauses, draws out the syllable, "what did you mean earlier when you said? Thought? That you thought I knew?"

"Uh." Keith's brow furrows. He's suddenly hot all over with embarrassment. "I don't know, I mean, you flirt with literally every person you talk to so I just sort of..."

"What? I don't flirt with guys."

"Yes you do."

Lance stops dead in his tracks. Keith grunts and stumbles when his arm gets yanked backwards. "What? No I don't!"

Keith turns and can do nothing but stare at Lance for a good few seconds. "Lance. Trust me. You flirt with guys."

Lance gapes at him. "I do?"

"Yes!"

"Does...does _everyone_ think? That?"

Keith gestures with his free hand. "I don't know, Lance, it's not like we've had a whole group discussion about it, but yeah!"

"Oh my god." Lance's eyes widen in realization. "Do I flirt with Shiro? Do I flirt with Hunk?" They widen with horror. "Do I flirt with _Coran_?" Unfocus. "Do I flirt with, you?"

Keith's eyes are magnetically drawn back down to the floor. "Uh. Just a little? Yes. Not so much, and uh. Yeah."

"How?" Lance exclaims.

"I don't know! I can't explain it, it's just your," he gestures at Lance. "Whole. Everything."

"Uh," Lance says, drawing out the syllable. "O...K?"

Keith starts walking again, still dragging Lance behind him by the hand. 

"So you find me attractive, is what you're saying."

Keith throws another glance over his shoulder. Lance's eyes are hooded. His mouth is quirked up in a knowing half smile. Keith quickly turns his attention back to the hallway ahead. "Come _on_.

"Oh! Yeah. Yeah, OK." He falls silent. They quicken their stride.

"Yes, I find you attractive," Keith says, loudly, eyes glued to the floor.

"Alright," Lance responds, after a moment. "I, think I can work with that!"

The door to Lance's bedroom opens with a mechanical whir. Lance pulls on Keith's hand, this time, pulls him inside. He toes off his shoes by the door and Keith drops his hand to unfasten his own boots.

They shed their jackets and as soon as both are slung over the couch Lance takes his hand again, pulls him over to the bed, sinks down on the edge. Keith's heat races. He's jittery and on edge, nervous and excited and hot all over. He drops Lance's hand and uses his own, flat on Lance's chest, to push him backwards onto the mattress.

"Oh," Lance says, letting his hands fall to either side of his head. "Yeah. I think I like this."

Keith's blood is roaring in his ears. He puts a knee into the bed, between Lance's, and plants his hands at Lance's sides. He leans down, weight transferring to his forearms, and the warmth of Lance's breath on his lips sends a shiver down his back.

Lance is smiling, laughing, long, low in his throat, and a furious frustration rises hot in Keith's chest. He wants Lance to stop chuckling at his own private little jokes for two seconds and fucking pay.

Attention.

Keith shoves himself forward, shoves his mouth roughly against Lance's. Lance hums and arches off the bed, pressing his chest in a long, warm line all the way up Keith's. Keith's arms go under Lance's back to squeeze him around the ribs, and Lance's come up to drape around Keith's shoulders, hands clutching at his back. Oh, _fuck_ , Lance feels so good like this, solid in the circle of his arms, one thigh pressed tight against the outside of Keith's, kissing so enthusiastically that Keith can barely keep up.

Lance hooks his leg around Keith's ass, pulls their hips together and.

"Oh, yeah, you like that, baby?" Lance murmurs, low and flirty, into Keith's ear, the tickle of his breath sending a wave of goosebumps up Keith's back and embarrassment sending a rush of heat over his face.

"Do _not_ call me that," Keith growls, and shoves his hips again into Lance's. Lance laughs, surprised and delighted. He shoves back, hands burying themselves in Keith's hair. Keith pants into his neck.

"I can't _believe_ I never even, thought, of doing this before!"

Keith groans, overwhelmed with heat, with the pounding of his own heart, and the answering throb between his legs. Lance yanks Keith's hips forward again with the back of his knee and Keith thrusts hard against him in a rush of irritation at the fact that Lance seems to think he needs instruction.

"I'm just wondering what kind of like, scenarios," Lance pants, "I would've come up with on my own, y'know? What do I even, ah! Want out of this? You've got like, an advantage, here!"

"I'm not the one with all the, so-called," Keith rolls his hips, "experience," he grinds out.

"Yeah but you've probably spent a lot of time, you know, thinking about shit you wanna do with guys! Not that this, what we're doing now, isn't...ah...great, actually, actually I like this a lot..."

Keith's arms tighten around Lance, tighter, tighter. He wants Lance to shut up. He has a frustration swelling within him that's getting dangerously close to the breaking point, and somehow this is only making it worse, not better.

"Ah, fuck," Lance is saying, "fuck, _fuck_..." He's hard against Keith's hip, his head thrown back, gasping for breath, and Keith wants to _wreck_ him in a way he can't possibly explain, so he doesn't, he just yanks an arm out from under Lance and shoves it between Lance's legs, squeezing hard at the seam of his pants. Lance gasps and bucks his hips, hands spasming in the back of Keith's shirt. "Oh, _man_ , oh, I, needed this, like, so bad..."

Keith squeezes again and Lance thrusts against his hand with a long keening sound. Needed this? Like what's going on between them is just something Lance is used to having but hasn't had in awhile, like ice cream or a day at the beach? Keith is furious, suddenly, furious at Lance, furious at himself, furious at the goddamned universe for throwing him into a situation where he's probably going to lose his goddamned virginity to Lance _of all people_...

Lance _moans_ when Keith pushes off him and starts fumbling with the fly of his pants. Keith rubs a hand roughly over the swell of Lance's dick that he can feel through the light cotton of his exposed underwear and suddenly Keith doesn't care how mad he is. There is no way he is passing this up.

"Ooh, ooh, I know," Lance says in that low, flirty tone. "We should both take off our pants. Then we should make out." He waggles his eyebrows.

Keith can't really argue with that, even though his face goes flaming hot with embarrassment. "Yeah. OK."

Lance is lying on his side on the bed when Keith turns back after stripping down, head propped up in one hand. Keith's eyes are magnetically drawn down his body, down over his waist to the curve of his hip to the bulge in the front of his underwear and. There's no way this isn't happening, Keith thinks. He is _fucked_.


	5. Chapter 5

Lance starts awake. When had he even fallen asleep? How long had he been out? He doesn't even remember dreaming. The last shreds of unconsciousness cling stubbornly to the edges of his mind. He tries to shake them off. The last thing he remembers. Is.

His eyes snap open. Even in the darkness he can see the shadow of Keith's form on the bed next to him, turned away. He must have turned out the lights. Is he asleep? He still looks so...

Keith's shoulders are hunched up to his ears. He's thrown off the covers, or more likely, never got under them in the first place, and his waist dips down to connect to the tilt of his hips against the mattress. Lance's eyes linger on the long lines of his legs, pale underneath the hem of his t-shirt, bent and twisted together.

Lance _wants_ him again, somehow. Anyhow. Nothing concrete, there's just an ache beginning in his chest that he thinks can only be lessened by putting as much of his body against Keith's as he possibly can, so he does. He slides an arm over Keith's waist and his thighs underneath Keith's ass, pushing his face against the back of Keith's neck.

Keith stiffens.

Not asleep then.

"Hey," Lance says, low, near Keith's ear.

"What?" Keith's voice is rough. Tired, but not sleepy.

"Just. You know." Lance shrugs, trusting that Keith will be able to feel it.

"I do?" Keith sounds suspicious. He shivers a little, and Lance moves his arm up to cover more of Keith's chest. Keith's upper arm is cool against the underside of Lance's.

"Yeah! I, just wanted to spoon with you!" That's reasonable.

"OK," Keith says. He's still stiff, not relaxed at all. Before he's even aware of what he's doing Lance is rubbing a hand over his upper arm and down over his collarbones, over and over, just like he used to do with his baby sister when she couldn't sleep, just like he used to do with Meg during that month or so last semester where she was regularly sneaking him up to her dorm room and he liked the feel of her body under his hands. "What are you doing."

"You're so tense! Calm down, man."

"Cut it out."

Lance lets out a long, exasperated huff. "You're no fun."

They lie together for a long time, so long that Lance is starting to nod off again, when Keith ducks out of Lance's arms and off the bed, then starts groping around on the floor. Lance blinks sleepily up at him as he zips his pants and fastens his belt around his hips.

"What are you doing?" Lance asks, suddenly awake. "Dude! Wait a sec!"

Keith swipes up his jacket, and doesn't even stop to put on his boots, just grabs them up his free hand and strides through the door.

"Keith? Wait! Keith!" Lance calls after him. He stumbles out of bed and across the room, but by the time he makes it out into the hallway Keith is disappearing into his own bedroom and the door is hissing shut behind him.

The lock on Keith's door fastens with a click that seems to echo eternally down the hall. 

Lance stares after him, bewildered. Should he go knock? There's no way Keith is going to answer the door, not after an exit like that, Lance decides, finally, and trudges back into his own room, flops down face first onto the bed.

Why does Keith always have to be so...

So...

He thought everything was good between them, now. Really good. Beyond good. It felt that way, earlier, when Keith was panting into his neck, arms tight around his chest, tightening, so _close_. Everything was so hot and so urgent and it felt like there were absolutely no barriers between them but maybe even after all that nothing has changed at all, not really.

But...

He can't just...

Lance rolls over and snatches his helmet up off the floor, shoves it onto his head. "Keith, are you there?" Silence. "Keith. Keith!"

Silence.

"I know you're there, come on, you can't just leave me hanging like this, come on, man!"

"Lance, leave him alone, and go. To. Sleep!" It's Pidge.

"Hey! Mind your own business!"

"If you don't want it to be my business, then don't broadcast it over the paladin channel! Dumbass."

"I had to! It's important!"

"Trust me. It isn't."

"Hey! It is too! You don't even know what y..."

"Lance?"

"Oh! Keith! I..."

"I'll see you tomorrow," Keith interrupts. "I just wanted to. Sleep."

"You _could_ have," Lance says, but is only met by silence.

"Are you done?" Pidge asks after a long moment.

"No I am _not_ ," Lance almost yells, but nobody says anything after that, not Lance, not Pidge, and not Keith.

 

Keith's helmet meets the floor with a clunk. No. He couldn't've.

He shivers when he buries himself back down under the covers. His bed isn't warm yet. The sheets are still cold.

He misses the desert. He probably isn't supposed to.

He's talked about it to Shiro. What he'd been doing. What he'd been _thinking_. He'd been OK, Keith had said, stubbornly, and Shiro made an expression like Keith had given the wrong answer to a question he didn't even know he'd been asked.

It was warm there.

So much warmer than where he was born. Too warm, sometimes, but Keith never really minded all that much. It was a dry heat, one that surrounded him on all sides, held him up, soaked through his skin all the way down to the bone. For the first time ever his life was on his own terms. He didn't have to answer to anyone. He could take care of himself.

There was a truck stop about two miles east by the highway where he'd go to shower every morning. He never talked to the old couple that owned the place; he knows they had to have noticed him, but they never said anything, just watched him dump laundry in the machine and swipe his card at the door to the shower room, day in, day out. Sometimes he wouldn't go when the idea of being _noticed_ became too heavy for him to bear, but he would always be back.

When his hair grew down too far over his eyes he'd trim it level with his eyebrows with a pair of nail scissors, squinting at himself in one of his bike mirrors. He'd go out exploring in the desert in a way he liked to think was systematic, following that continuous, persistent instinct in his gut, and watched hundreds of breathtaking sunrises and sunsets over the strange, soaring rock formations. He found caves he wasn't sure anyone had even laid eyes on since the people that painted them so long ago. The thought was overwhelming. He researched explosives and how to make them, in case he'd need to go deeper in any of the caves. He ate military rations that heated themselves without the use of a stove via chemical reactions. He watched the stars rotate around him, horizon to horizon, watched the wide streak of the Milky Way split the sky in two between his handlebars as he sped over the desert, as fast as he could possibly push his bike, wind whipping through his hair.

He slept on the dusty old couch that had been left in the cabin, deeply, after a long day of exploring, or not at all, breath short for hours upon hours in the darkness, knife within reach, with the _knowledge_ that someone was going to _find_ him, someone was going to _know_ about him and he'd have to leave this life he'd made for himself, have to leave the inexplicable call he could still feel somewhere deep in the desert, betrayed by the thunderous pounding of his heart in the dead midnight hush.

Then everything changed, so suddenly that he didn't even have time to think. His favorite pair of jeans are still crumpled up in the corner by the couch from the night before Shiro crashed. His computer is still sitting, closed, on the desk he rigged up out of some crates and two by fours he found by the side of the road. His bike is still parked at the foot of a rock formation near where they found Blue.

How long will those things stay there? _Are_ they still there? He'd just assumed. The idea, suddenly formed, of someone finding them, of someone _moving_ them elbows its way into his mind and he feels almost physically sick.

Everything had been so easy when he'd been on his own.

But.

This isn't working. This isn't working either. Keith can't relax, can't shut off the steady, sick buzz vibrating around in his skull. He'd felt so smothered when he'd been in bed with Lance, but now he feels so absolutely helplessly alone that he's starting to wonder again what actually makes anything worth anything.

He abandons the idea of sleep and hits the training deck.

He's up to Level Five with the gladiator. All this business with Lance is putting his training behind schedule. He wanted to beat Level Five by the time they got to Yven. He swore to himself he would. It took him a few days to beat Level One, a few more to beat Two just before the castle started trying to kill them, several weeks to beat Three, and a month and a half for Four.

It's been almost four months and he still can't beat Five.

He refuses to give up.

He's close, he knows it. He'd spent most of this trip training, and he's at the point now where he feels like every time he tries to get to Six he learns something new, something monumental, about the way he can move, the way he can _fight_. Keith's always been good at fighting. His reflexes have always been extremely fast and his instincts highly accurate, but that will only get you so far, he's learned.

He can always be better.

He blocks the next downswing from the robot, letting the force of it move along his downturned blade as he slips to the left. The robot is quick, though. Doesn't lose its balance. It turns counter-clockwise towards him and he's barely able to get his sword up in time to block the swing coming up from underneath.

He jumps back, once, twice. The robot advances. Thrusts. Keith knocks its blade to the side. He's on the defensive.

Keith's lost his edge now. This is it. He's going to lose.

_You're no fun._

Maybe not, Keith thinks, blocking each of the robot's strikes, one after the other. Maybe not, and when exactly did it start mattering so much what Lance thinks?

Thrust. Parry. Thrust. Parry. He feints, off rhythm, and the robot takes just a split second too long to catch on. Just a split second, but it's an opening he can exploit.

In one breathless moment, without hesitation, he stabs upwards into the robot's chin and up through its head. It evaporates from existence in a flash of blue.

He...did it.

Keith tries to catch his breath. He's jittery all over with excitement, with adrenaline. He drops into a stance, sword ready.

"Begin," he says, chest heaving, "begin Level Six."

 

"Have you guys seen Keith?" Lance calls into the mess hall.

"Can't you just leave the poor guy alone?" Hunk calls back.

"No, I can't just 'leave him alone'," Lance retorts, marching into the room, framing his face with air quotes. "It's kind of important!"

"Not this again," Pidge mumbles around a spoon, glaring up at Lance from behind a holographic display.

"Again?"

"Didn't you hear him yelling last night? Over the paladin channel?"

"No! Must've slept through it."

"Who cares," Lance interrupts. "You heard Keith say that he would talk to me today, though, right?"

"Yes," Pidge answers, begrudgingly, after a moment.

"So it's today, now, obviously, and I can't find him."

"Lance," Hunk says, in that tone of his that sounds like he's either speaking to a child or an advancing bear, "did something happen?"

"Yeah, something happened," Lance spits out. "Last night we f..." The next vowel catches on his tongue and won't let go. "We, uh." Hunk and Pidge are both staring at him with degrees of irritation and concern and Lance turns, abruptly, turns and walks back towards the door. "Nope! Actually! Nothing happened."

Lance knows where Keith is. It's obvious. He's not anywhere else so he has to be with Red, and if he's with Red the only way to talk to him is through Blue and Lance doesn't want to, doesn't want Keith to feel his thoughts right now, even though he _does_ , he wants...

What does he want?

He keeps walking, shoves his hands deeper into his jacket pockets. He wants Keith to want to be around him. He wants Keith to want to be _alone_ with him. He wants Keith to stop thinking about swords and training and Lions and Voltron and hang out with him, talk to him about nothing, go exploring, something, anything, maybe make out with him a little in some back hallway, whatever it takes, really, to get Keith alone with him and hopefully at least a little bit undressed.

Lance isn't picky.

It's just like he found the answer to a riddle that's been bugging him for basically forever and the answer abruptly opened the door on a tidal wave of desperate emotion that Lance didn't even realize he'd been capable of. Everything about Keith, he just...

Needed?

Keith is really fucking hot, Lance thinks to himself, and it seems so surreal to think but it's _true_ and it's impossible to unthink now that he's thought it. Lived it. Why doesn't Keith want to be around him all the time like he wants to be around Keith? Keith liked what they did last night, Lance knows he does. It was pretty goddamn obvious that he did. Why does Keith always have to be so...

So...

Lance walks faster, even though he has nowhere to go.

 

"Yeah, Red, I _know_ ," Keith snaps, smacking his head back against his headrest. "I get it, you told me so, can we just move on? Now? Please?"

 _Negative_ , Red blares into his mind.

"I fucked up! What do you want me to say?"

_Speak to him_

"I am! I mean. I will!" If Lance wants to talk he'll figure out where Keith is and go to his own Lion. Then they'll talk.

 _Shortcuts_ , Red barks. _Preventing you from truly learning him. Knowing him. He is his outside as well as his inside. You must learn to read his inside from his outside. Otherwise you will never understand_

Red doesn't usually compose such complex thoughts. Keith isn't even sure he parsed it right.

_It will not be easy, most of all, for you_

"What's that supposed to mean?"

_You assume the worst. Assign meaning where none resides. You think you protect yourself, but you do not_

Keith frowns in anger. His brow sharply furrows. "You're a fucking, robot _lion_. What do you know about...You don't know _shit_."

_Amusement. Perhaps. However. In this situation, these thoughts do you harm_

"I guess," Keith mutters.

 _They do_ , Red trumpets. _They are poison_

 

There's still nobody on the training deck. This is the third time Lance has been by this morning and he's starting to wish he brought his bayard with him because he desperately needs something to do that isn't just trudging back and forth from one end of the castle to the other. He drops to his knees a short way inside the room, then drops flat on his face, spreadeagled.

What is Lance supposed to do? What if this is it? What if he never has another chance with Keith? Lance doesn't even understand what he _did_. Why won't Keith just talk to him?

What if...

He regrets what happened last night?

Lance groans and pulls his arms inward, drops his head down in the circle of them. What could he have not liked about it? It had been so amazing. He doesn't understand how Keith could have felt differently, especially after the way he'd touched Lance's body, so sure, almost _possessive_...

A shiver runs up Lance's back and he buries his burning face deeper in his arms. How can he possibly explain any of this? The prospect is terrifying. Want, for him, before this, had always felt so cut and dry. If someone didn't want him back, it never felt like the end of the world. He'd always cast his net out farther than he probably should have, but that meant that there were always at least a couple of fish that got pulled in, and when they slipped free it never _hurt_. He'd always been able to stay above it. Allura's constant rejection of his advances didn't hurt his feelings. Nyma had always been planning on betraying them. He never cared about the fact that Abby would never invite him anywhere her friends might see them; he had her where it counted. He just shrugged and moved on when Cristina stopped answering his texts, and when Meg rescheduled their time together over and over until they never saw each other again outside of class Lance was still sure he'd eventually find someone else.

That's it, probably. The future always seemed so limitless, and Lance realizes now how little he actually _knew_ any of these girls. A strange feeling wells inside him, something like regret, or guilt. They hadn't known him, either. He never gave them the chance. He didn't know how.

_Where are you?_

He still doesn't know how to answer that question, and he doesn't even know where to begin trying.


	6. Chapter 6

Lance never comes down to the hangars, never goes to see Blue. Keith finally leaves Red, guilt and anxiety turning over and over in his gut. He doesn't exactly want to see Lance, but he does, desperately, all at the same time. Lance had to have known he was with Red. They could have talked.

Maybe Lance doesn't want to talk.

Maybe Lance is done with him.

What is he going to do?

Shiro is leaning over one of the consoles on the bridge, Coran at another. For a journey of this length, Allura isn't required to continuously power the ship, but she does need to top it off, once daily. Keith hangs around in the doorway, waiting for her to finish.

She lowers her hands from the twin pedestals at her post. She doesn't look tired. She never looks tired, not exactly, and Keith doesn't understand any of this magic alien shit.

He approaches Shiro, still at his console. "Shiro. Can I talk to you?"

"Can it wait until later? We're about to begin some-" Shiro looks over his shoulder, and when he locks eyes with Keith his expression changes. His eyebrows unknit. "Yes. Of course. Just a moment. I'll be right there." His eyes are gentle.

Keith waits around in the hallway, leaning carefully back against the wall, arms crossed, until Shiro is finished at his console, then finished with an inaudible conversation with Allura. Finally Shiro is crossing the room, crossing the threshold.

"Is everything alright?" Shiro asks him, the corners of his mouth twisting in concern.

Keith's hands are tightly fisted in his own sleeves. He glances around Shiro into the bridge, where Allura and Coran are still busy. "It's...sort of. Can I talk to you? In private?"

"Of course."

There's an officer's lounge nearby, full of couches and chairs and strange inlaid artwork on the walls, depicting what Keith can only assume is the surface of Altea. He sits gingerly down in a high-backed chair, arms crossed over his chest, one knee over the other. Shiro pulls up a chair across from him, leans forward, elbows on his knees.

"What's wrong?"

Keith takes a deep breath. In. Out. He tries not to wince. "It's, uh. Lance."

Shiro's expression doesn't change. He nods.

"I..." Keith's eyes flick from Shiro's eyes to the collar of his shirt. "I just don't, know what to do." His head sinks into the back of the cushion. "Everything just got really complicated and I don't really know, what to do."

Shiro nods again, expression carefully neutral. Frustration swells in Keith's chest. He's not explaining any of this right. Not at all.

"I think I fucked up," Keith tries to clarify, but he can't come up with an explanation for how, or why, it's all too mixed up and terrible.

"Are you talking about last night?" Shiro asks, and Keith's eyes go wide. His heart lurches.

"Oh, oh, you, must have, heard, over the..." Keith smacks a hand over his eyes and relaxes back against his seat, adrenaline leaving him shaky and a little too hot. "The paladin channel. Yeah." He drops his hand. Shiro is looking at him, eyebrows drawn, eyes searching and intense.

"What happened?"

Keith laughs, a small, humorless exhale. "I uh, it's sort of...We. Uh." 

An edge of concern creeps into Shiro's expression, and suddenly Keith _needs_ Shiro to understand.

Keith swallows. "I, uh. Don't know how to...We sort of. We, uh. Last night," Keith tries, blood rushing in his ears, "we kind of, uh. Did stuff."

Shiro stares at him, and Keith isn't sure whether that long moment of incomprehension is more or less humiliating than the moment directly afterward when Shiro's eyes widen and his mouth rounds slightly in understanding.

Keith can feel himself blushing all the way up to his hairline. He's frozen in place.

"I see," Shiro says, and Keith regrets every decision he's ever made that led him on the path towards this moment. "Is everything alright?"

"No," Keith blurts out.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Yes," Keith manages, but absolutely nothing else seems to want to make the leap from thought to speech. He falls into a humiliating silence.

"Nobody's going to be upset," Shiro says, gently. "It's not unusual. Allura told me once that sort of thing is very common among paladins."

Keith goes hot all over, then cold, all at once. "What."

"Apparently sharing such an intimate mental connection can very easily lead to romantic feelings. Actually, she told me that it would be far more unusual if something like that _didn't_ happen within our group."

"I do _not_ have 'romantic feelings' for Lance," Keith says, words suddenly tumbling over each other to get out. "That's not what...this isn't..."

Shiro's eyebrows twitch upwards towards his hairline.

"And he doesn't, for me, either, that's _ridiculous_."

"Did he tell you that?"

"No, but..." Keith falls silent again. There's something cold, now, sinking down through his gut. Shiro continues to look at him in that way that he always does, patient, but expectant, and it makes Keith squirm internally, like it always does, with the knowledge that there's probably some obvious quality of life and human interaction that he's fucking up. "He just doesn't, OK?"

Shiro nods, slowly. "You'd know better than me."

Keith stares hard at the corner of one of the floor tiles, near the front leg of Shiro's chair. His mind is racing. Lance's hand in his. Lance underneath him, hips bucking, head thrown back. Lance's arm over his waist, lips at the nape of his neck. Lance yelling his name, about to be sucked out the airlock, Lance unconscious in his arms, barely breathing. Lance brushing him off, insulting him time and time and time again, egging him on until they both crash their Lions straight into the ground.

"What if he did?" Shiro asks, quietly, after a moment, and Keith swallows, with difficulty.

"I don't," he tries to answer, "I don't know."

 

"So then it turned out that the problem wasn't actually with the secondary starboard thruster like we thought, it was just with the control panel! That one Galra ship that got in a hit when we were in the Noveg system? Remember? Probably shorted it out. So it wasn't malfunctioning at all, the computer just _thought_ it was! Isn't that hilarious?"

Lance is slumped over the mess hall table, food practically untouched, arms loosely crossed. "Funniest thing I've heard all day."

"And then it turned out that one of those weird sticky seed pod things they had on Kulrannis attached itself to one of the exhaust vents and grew roots halfway up to the inlet valve. Isn't it nuts that those things can grow in _space_? What was it even, like, eating?"

"Who knows." He drops his head to the tabletop.

"OK, Lance, seriously, what the heck is wrong with you?"

Lance rolls his head to the side and peers up at Hunk. Hunk's mouth twists, his chin in one hand. "Nothing."

Hunk rolls his eyes. "Whatever, man."

Lance lets out a long, overdramatic breath and drops his face back to the table.

"Seriously, what is your problem?"

"Do you think he actually, you know, likes me?"

"Uh," Hunk begins, and is silent for a good several seconds. "What are you talking about?"

"Keith!" Lance exclaims, shoving himself upright. "He's just so, fucking, hot and cold, all the time, and let me tell you, buddy, we are talking _very_ hot, and _very_ cold, here!"

"Of course he likes you," Hunk says, but his tone is anything but reassuring.

"Does he?" Lance throws up his hands. "Are you _sure_? How do you _know_?"

"Well, yeah, I dunno, I mean, we all _like_ each other, I mean, how could we not?" Hunk's eyebrows furrow.

"Hunk, you're killing me, here," Lance groans, dropping his head into his hands. "You're just saying that to make me feel better, I know you are."

Silence drags out, and drags out, until Hunk finally swallows, audibly. "If you don't mind me asking, why exactly do you care so much if Keith likes you or not? You have to admit that this is, uh, about a hundred and eighty degrees away from shit you were saying like, two days ago."

"What? No it isn't."

Hunk's mouth tightens. "Two days ago you were sitting right there!" He points at the seat next to him, "saying all this shit about how you, and I quote, 'totally hate that guy'!"

"Well, yeah, but I was obviously joking!"

Hunk's eyebrows twitch. "So you don't think that Keith is worried about whether or not _you_ actually like _him_...? Or, anything...?"

"No, because obviously I do," Lance protests. "Trust me, there's no way he doesn't know."

"Uh, I don't know what that's supposed to mean, but OK." Hunk doesn't look convinced.

Lance waves a dismissive hand. "We've been mind melding and shit."

Hunk stares at him. "You and Keith. Have been mind melding? By yourselves? What?"

"Yeah! There was this thing, with our Lions, where we were talking to them, then we were talking to each other!" Hunk looks even more confused. "Well, I mean, I guess that was after the other time we used those, you know, psychic headband thingies. But, yeah!"

Hunk's eyes narrow, searching, chin jutting forward, for one long moment. "I seriously do not get..." he gestures at Lance, "the two of you, but, whatever, man. Hold on, if it's so obvious that Keith knows you like him from all the mind melding and shit, why are you still so worried about whether or not _he_ likes _you_?"

Lance pauses. He sucks his lower lip into his mouth and releases it with a small smack. "Uh, because Keith is fucking... _Keith_ , and you can never tell what's going on with him?"

Hunk sighs. "Lance, you're _killing_ me."

"What!" Lance throws his hands in the air.

They fall into silence again and Lance resignedly joins Hunk in finishing breakfast. Just as he's pushing his bowl off to the side, footsteps sound in the hallway, and Lance's spine goes ramrod straight. He grips the edge of the table, eyes like saucers.

Keith appears around the edge of the doorframe and freezes, his expression as much like a deer in the headlights as it ever gets. Hunk stares back and forth between them, then shoves his empty bowl decisively into the middle of the table.

"OK!" Hunk announces, breaking the silence, "That's enough for me." He pushes back his chair, and claps Keith on the back on the way out. Keith stiffens, eyebrows twitching.

"Keith!" Lance says, after a very long, tense moment. "Hey, uh..." He only hesitates a moment before he's shoving himself to his feet, bounding around the table and crossing the room with larger and larger strides. "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry," he says when he's way inside Keith's personal space, hovering, hands itching to touch. He fists them in the sleeves of his own jacket instead.

"What are _you_ sorry for?" Keith asks, eyebrows drawn. He's tense, but he's not moving away. It makes Lance a little breathless.

"I don't know! Whatever I did. I had to have done something, right?" Fuck. Keith's eyes. Almost black, but a warm black that gleams this deep purplish maroon color underneath that Lance's gaze can't help but be drawn to, probably ever since the beginning. Keith looks back at him, the crease between his eyebrows deepening, but he doesn't move.

"No, look, I'm sorry, I'm just..." Keith's mouth twists. "This is, hard, for me. I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm doing."

"Hey, don't worry," Lance says, a slow grin spreading over his face. He looks at Keith from under his eyelashes, and Keith takes a quick breath that makes heat twist beautifully in Lance's middle. "You got me to help you through it, you know." He winks, grinning, briefly trapping his lower lip between his teeth.

Keith's mouth tightens. His eyes narrow, but he doesn't drop his gaze. Lance's hands can't behave themselves anymore, and go to Keith's waist like magnets. Keith leans in, just barely, as Lance's hands slide over his waist to the small of his back. That curve. Oh, that's good. Keith tentatively uncrosses his arms and curls his hands around Lance's shoulders, and Lance leaves one hand low on Keith's back, sliding the other higher, intending to pull Keith in against him, when Keith stiffens with a little hiss of an inhale that's too sharp to mean anything but pain.

Lance immediately drops his hand. "Shit! Are you OK?"

"Fine."

"What happened?"

"Nothing."

Lance moves his hand back up and shoves a fingertip into Keith's side. Keith flinches away from his touch. "You are such a fucking liar! God! Are you hurt? What the fuck happened to you?"

"I was just, training! Ow! Lance!" Keith struggles away from Lance's probing fingers. "Fucking quit!"

"No!" Lance makes a grab for the bottom of Keith's shirt and tries to untuck it from his belt. Keith shoves at him, and maybe Keith's technically a better fighter with swords and knives but he clearly doesn't have the edge on plain old basic roughhousing that Lance does. Lance finally gets him blinded and immobilized in his own jacket, shirt hiked up halfway to his shoulderblades, and Keith seems to give up the fight. "Keith! Holy shit!"

There's a dark purple bruise on his side, the diameter of a grapefruit at the smallest point, wrapping around to his back, stark and awful against the pale cream of his skin. There are more bruises, too, some fresh, many more old and faded. Lance loosens his grip in shock and Keith takes immediate advantage, wincing as he pulls his clothes back in order. "It's not a big deal."

"What are you talking about? Why didn't you go to the pods?" Lance doesn't want to be yelling, but he is.

"Because it's not a big deal!" Keith snaps.

"Doesn't it _hurt_?" Lance throws up his hands.

Keith shrugs.

"Yeah, obviously it hurts, you are such a fucking..." Lance can't even think of a good word. He clenches his hands in his hair. "What if something's _broken_? You can't just..."

"Nothing's broken," Keith interrupts, and Lance stares at him.

"Why do I get the feeling that there should be a 'this time' after that? Jesus fucking christ, Keith..."

"I'll be OK!"

"Well, obviously! But that's so far away from the _point_ that the point is, not even, a point anymore, because it's invisible!"

Keith's eyebrows furrow and Lance completely abandons his metaphor in lieu of grabbing Keith's wrist and dragging him off down the hallway. "What are you doing?" Keith protests.

"Taking you to a goddamned _pod_!"

Keith struggles, manages to yank his arm free. Lance makes another grab for it and misses. "I'm not going to a pod!"

"Yes you are!" Lance lunges for one of his sleeves with both hands. Keith shoves at his balled fists, then at his chest, trying to get him to let go. Lance makes a gamble and grabs for the front of Keith's jacket with one hand, too, so he can't shimmy out of it and escape.

"No, I'm, _not_!"

"Yes, you _are_!"

They finally reach an impasse, Lance still holding onto Keith's jacket as tight as he can, Keith panting, unable to get him to let go. Keith's clearly low on energy. He must have been coming to eat, and Lance knows he must not have gotten a lot of sleep the night before. Lance himself was on the training deck for most of the morning, so Keith had to have gone there not long after he left Lance's room and who knows how long he spent there...

"Fine, fine," Lance says, finally, dropping Keith's jacket and taking a step back, throwing up his hands. "I'm not a huge fan of the pods, either, I mean, after that explosion, and then, after I got stuck in there when the castle was trying to kill us, 'cause like, you're unconscious and stuff, but I still like, remember it, sort of, you know? The way it felt? Totally silent and freezing and I couldn't move. Urgh. I dream about it sometimes and it sucks."

Keith crosses his arms over his chest. He looks so unhappy, and Lance needs to do _something_ , anything, to wipe that expression off his face.

"Look, just come back to my room, OK? Put some...well we don't have ice, but the taps are pretty cold? We'll put something on it."

"Alright. I guess." Keith's posture is so closed off, and it's absolutely killing Lance, so he reaches out, curls a hand around Keith's upper arm, tugs gently until Keith uncrosses his arms and he can slide his palm down Keith's sleeve until their hands are linked. They make the trek back to Lance's in silence.

"Take off your shirt," Lance instructs, once they're reached his room. "I'll be right back." He gives Keith a little wave and crosses into the bathroom. Alteans don't have towels; their shower facilities don't even use water. It's some kind of Star Trek shit that Lance doesn't understand, but it seems to work. There is a water tap for drinking in every bathroom, though, and pretty early on Lance had cut up some of what he guesses were once someone's sleeping garments into some small towels. It just feels weird and wrong to not have towels around, Lance thinks.

He puts one under the drinking tap until it's sopping wet, then wrings it out until it stops dripping so much. It's not ice, but it still feels cold to the touch, and that's better than nothing, Lance guesses.

"OK, now lie facedown on the bed, you're supposed to keep really bad bruises above the heart if you...Keith!" Keith is still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, all of his clothes still firmly on his body. "I told you to take off your shirt!"

Keith's hands go to the front of his jacket. He hesitates. "Uh..."

"Oh my god!" Lance exclaims, holding the cloth out to the side with one hand. He grabs at the collar of Keith's jacket and tugs at it until Keith lets him pull it off over his shoulders. When it's off Keith's hands go immediately back up to curl around his own arms. "Keith, seriously, what is your problem?"

Keith glares up at him. "It's cold."

"OK, OK, Jesus Christ, just fucking...At least take off that dumb belt!" Keith hesitantly does, and Lance grabs him by the arm and drags him towards the bed. "Lie down." Keith puts a knee into the mattress, throwing a skeptical look over his shoulder at Lance, who gestures impatiently at the bed. Keith finally lies down on his stomach and Lance hikes up the back of his shirt as best he can. "Goddamn, Keith..."

Keith just huffs, his face turned away. Lance sinks down beside him and brushes a fingertip around the perimeter of the bruise. Keith stiffens, then relaxes as Lance's touch remains gentle. "What _happened_?"

"I dunno. Probably the last time the gladiator kicked me down," Keith says with a note of bitterness.

"What about these?" Lance's fingertip travels up to another half-dollar sized bruise near the bottom of Keith's shoulder blade, then down, connecting the dots between a series of smaller bruises, all differing shades of blue and green.

"I dunno."

Lance huffs and lays the cloth over the bruise. Keith stiffens and hisses at the cold. "Tell me when it stops feeling cold, 'kay?"

"Yeah, OK," Keith says, begrudging. They sit in silence for a moment or two.

"So you spend a lot of time on the training deck, huh?"

Keith huffs again. "You _know_ I spend a lot of time on the training deck, Lance."

"Ever heard of small talk?" Lance retorts, eyeing the slight dip of Keith's bare waist and the bumps of his spine with what, he realizes now, can really only be described as hunger.

They fall into an odd, loaded silence, Keith's back rising and falling with every breath. "Why are you doing this," Keith asks, after a moment, voice stifled and strange.

"What do you mean, why am I doing this? What, making sure your huge fucking injury gets taken care of? Jesus, Keith."

"It's just a bruise," Keith mumbles.

"Just a bruise that's obviously _hurting_ you," Lance corrects. He's suddenly sure that Keith isn't going to tell him when the cloth has warmed up, so he peels it off and flips it over. Keith stiffens with a sharp intake of breath.

"Nobody usually, gives a shit."

Lance's eyebrows furrow. The admission wasn't bitter, or maybe, not nearly as bitter as it should be. More resigned, like it's the natural order of the universe, and Lance is furious, suddenly, furious at Keith and furious at everyone back on the whole goddamn planet Earth. "I give a lot more than a shit, OK? All of us do," he snaps.

Keith pushes himself up a little on his forearms and slants a glance over his shoulder, brow deeply creased, eyes so focused and intense that it sends a thrill right up Lance's spine. His mouth tightens and he doesn't answer, and Lance can't stand it. He puts a hand to the curve of Keith's lower back, slides it up, up the ridges of his spine, and Keith arches a little under his touch, the movement so slight, almost hesitant.

"So don't you dare try to hide this shit," Lance tries to scold him, but it comes out way gentler than he'd intended. He pushes his hand under the hem of Keith's shirt, slots his palm against one sharp shoulder blade, fingertips stroking over the warm skin just above.

"OK," Keith says, finally, voice all strange. His breathing has quickened, his back rising and falling rapidly under Lance's palm, and heat swells in Lance's middle, sudden and intense.

"I'd even wear a sexy nurse outfit. Want me to put on a sexy nurse outfit? I could _rock_ a sexy nurse outfit."

Keith actually laughs at that, low and a little hoarse, and something blooms in Lance's chest, warm and breathless and _right_.

**Author's Note:**

> i do edits of the original voltron [@voltron-edits](http://voltron-edits.tumblr.com/) and post shippy stuff and...mostly stuff about keith [@reinkist](http://reinkist.tumblr.com/)


End file.
